Headphones, or Speakers???

Hey, I heard the Orpheus cans at the Stereophile HT show, too. Sure, they sounded wounderful, but $11k wonderful...? I'd take that much worth of speaker over any headphones, any day. Heard some talk (likely nonsense, but vaguely informative) that you can get approximately comparable sound quality (how's that for an inherently subjective fallacy, but anyway) for roughly 10% of the price in headphones v. speakers. In other words, according to this formula, my Sennheiser HD600's at around $360 should be roughly equivalent in quality to my $3,600 Thiel 2.3's (no, not actually what I paid for either...). So, do I like'em about the same? Not at all. I've tried running the cans off of a Headroom Home amp, a Rogue 99, through the 99 to the Headroom, with a Meridian 508, with an AH!Tjoeb and all manner of permutations thereof and, every time, I'd prefer to be listening to the speakers. Don't get me wrong, the Sennheisers are great, and I really like the Headroom amp, but there is something more palpable and present about speakers that I, at any rate, haven't been able to duplicate with headphones. I gave up trying to compete with the two, moved the cans, the Tjoeb, and the Headroom in to the bedroom, and now they and the speakers get used at different times, for different reasons, in different places and everyone's happy. Guess that makes this another vote for "both."

Lack of imaging, lack of room vibrations and feeling the deep bass. Headphones are very useful but don't come close to speakers for me.

Try listening to Stax headphones while sitting on a first class subwoofer.

I am listening to my Stax Lamda Signature this very minute. It's a very good headphone but it can't reproduce the imaging and bass as my Revel Studios.

I have HD600 and an Antique Sound Lab Tube head-amp.
Headphones can't be beat for “quite time” listening, when others members of household are doing their thing. Also, for some critical listening they are excellent. No room interactions to cloud detail. In this regard, headphones are an excellent tool for the purpose of speaker setup in determining additive or subtractive issues.
However, there is no way that headphones are a substitute for a good speaker system...even the best don't do stereo spread, depth or bass well.